2a : Episode Three : Necessary Crimes
by Taidine
Summary: The return to the past program seems to be glitching.  It's brought some impossible documents back with the Lyoko team this time, and with no way to fix it, looks like they'll just have to burn the evidence.  Part of an alternate lateseasontwo story arc.
1. Chapter 1 : Conspiracy

**Episode Three : Necessary Crimes**

Soundtrack: Supertramp's "From Now On" (Just 'cause it fits…)

Chapter One: Conspiracy 

Welcome, again, to the cafeteria, where oblivious students are enjoying Sunday afternoon for the third time. A blonde-haired journalist finished her notes with a flourish, tucking her pen behind her ear and rubbing her head before wandering off, trailing two junior reporters in her wake. She looked… distant. Her pink shirted interviewee stared after her for a moment, then gestured to her cronies and also headed out, looking equally distant and vaguely furious. The sussurus rose and fell, hundreds of students blissfully unaware of how many times this day had been relived discussing absolutely nothing, blanketing the cafeteria…

…But never touching a knot of three students sitting at the end of one long, white table, eating their lunches with some caution. The only one enjoying his almost-certainly-food was a purple clad boy with improbably spiked blonde hair; the serious looking boy next to him was pushing something that might have been meat around with his fork, and the pink-haired girl across the table, having already donated her food to the cause of her friend's stomach, sat staring into space.

Gradually, her eyes focused on the blonde who was rapidly shoveling food into his mouth, and she smiled. "Well, the download worked – I remember everything about you, Odd."

He looked up, swallowed, and asked with melodramatic horror: "Everything? Oh no! Don't tell Ulrich about the time when…" he glanced at the brown-haired boy next to him, ostentatiously put a finger to his lips.

The pink haired girl giggled. "Well, as much as I knew in the first place. I'm sure there are things I don't want to know. But I can't believe I thought Sissi was one of us!" She rose and walked with her empty tray to a garbage can; the two boys followed.

"Mistakes happen to everyone," Odd reassured her. "Believe it or not, Her Royal Pinkness wound up being helpful for once. What made Jeremie decide to return to the past so quickly?" The group began walking towards the exit.

"Sissi, what else?" Ulrich replied with some scorn, "but Yumi was the one who pushed the button. Aelita and I had just come up from the scanner rooms."

Aelita pushed open the cafeteria doors. A crisp autumnal breeze hit her face, and she breathed deeply, relishing the feel and scent after a bout in the largely sensationless world of Lyoko. "I'm not a member of Sissi's fan club either," Odd was saying in his nasal voice, "But why did she do that?"

"Because the debate was pointless," Ulrich explained, "We depend completely on trust, and Sissi doesn't know the meaning of the word. She's nice enough when she's trying to get… something, and she's helpful when it saves her own skin, but she can never be _friends _with anyone. She would call in the authorities to shut down the supercomputer even if it meant killing Aelita. The only thing Sissi care about is Sissi."

On a park bench just within earshot, a girl with long, shiny black hair and a pink shirt sat listening, growing redder and redder with each word.

"Wow, Ulrich," Odd was saying as the trio rounded a large metal structure, "You really have a deep understanding of Yumi's psyche."

The girl gritted her teeth and clenched her hands into fists. "Is that what they think? Ooo, I _hate _them!"

The boy sitting next to her, orange-haired and thuggish, grunted. "Want me to…"

"No. I'll find out what they're up to – they can't keep me out forever!"

"Tell me about it," said a cynical voice behind her. A blonde-haired girl with a slim black choker and a pen behind one ear was leaning on the back of the bench. Oh, that annoying reporter – Kloe something.

"What are _you _doing here?" Sissi accused.

"Same as you. Trying to crack the code of Mystery Group over there," Kloe something replied, pointing vaguely towards where the three had last been visible. "Seems to me they shut everyone out."

Sissi shook her head. "Only people who aren't _losers,_" she responded shrilly. "That Aelita got in five minutes after she transferred from _Canada._ They know I'm too good for them-" she preened "-but _you_ should fit right in."

Kloe had just conducted an entire interview with Sissi and was beginning to realize you had to take anything the principal's daughter said with a grain of salt. "Interesting… I just feel like there's something I should know about them!"

Sissi pouted. "_I_ know they're hiding something."

"I think we should try to find out what," the reporter said firmly. The two girls looked at each other with the intensity of a staring contest. Kloe blinked first; Sissi stuck out a hand to shake.

"Deal."

- - - -

Aelita, Ulrich, and Odd entered the neatly manicured woods near the school in silence, but Odd wasn't one to let that state persist. "So, I had a novel idea. Provided XANA's finally gonna give us a break, maybe I'll do my homework."

"You? Do your homework? I think I'm going to faint from the shock," Ulrich deadpanned.

"What, Odd didn't do his homework?" Offered a new voice. It belonged to a bespectacled blond boy walking towards them. "Why am I not surprised?"

"Nice to see you too, Jeremie," said Odd, crossing his arms over the dog logo on his shirt. "How go things at the secret lab?"

"Well, I was trying to figure out why the scipazoa got part of Aelita's memory, since it's never done anything like that before. I thought maybe it had an isolating program fragment allowing partial file retrieval, but when I ran my XMP scan I found some weird programming ghosts on the return to the past…" He broke off at a trio of blank stares.

"English, please?" Begged Odd, "We don't speak technobabble."

"Uh…" Jeremie marshaled his resources. "Well, when you have a dynamic program – that's one that changes itself – sometimes you start getting artifacts. Little mistakes. In the code. But if enough of those build up, it starts looking like a personality. A ghost."

"Like XANA?" Ulrich ventured boldly.

"Well, that might explain how XANA went bad. But more importantly, our back in time program has gone temperamental on us. Theoretically, the only thing that should be returned to the past is our memory and anything within Lyoko. To the rest of the world, it never happened," Jeremie lectured. He had begun to walk back towards the school at this point: his friends trailed behind him with various degrees of puzzlement. "But until I clean out the ghosts, it might not work that way."

The dormitories reared up before them. Standing by the entrance was a tall, blocky woman in the uniform of a police officer; the strolling quartet failed to notice. "What does that mean for us?" Asked Ulrich.

"Well," Jeremie began, "I don't know whether it's becoming more or less discriminating, but given Aelita's experience, I'm going to assume less. Some effects might eventually include injuries not healing, other people working closely with us retaining some memory, objects we effect staying affected… I'm not sure how long it's been going on, but the corruption is progressive. It's going to take me days to straighten out."

"Oh." The four walked in glum silence towards the school.

"Maybe I should-" Ulrich began, but was cut off by the crisp, militant voice of the hitherto unnoticed police officer.

"Excuse me, is any of you Ulrich Stern?"

The brown haired boy looked at her with a surly expression. It took a brave person to look at this particular officer with defiance: she was tall and impressively built, with a cap of tightly curled hair and a tight-lipped, baleful expression. However, Ulrich recognized her – he had fought her when she was possessed by XANA, and if he could face down a policewoman with murderous intent and superhuman strength, he could certainly face the same policewoman when she was mostly indifferent and armed with only a glare.

"Yeah, I'm Ulrich," he told her.

She nodded. "I need to have a word with you at the precinct."


	2. Chapter 2 : Breaking and Entering

**Episode Three : Necessary Crimes**

Soundtrack: Supertramp's "From Now On" (Just 'cause it fits…)

_ Okay. I know Odd is roommates with Ulrich; in this episode, and in fact every other episode of the season, I instead have Odd rooming with Jeremie. I have several possible IC explanations: Ulrich's continued requests to get Odd out of his room in the beginning of last year finally got through to the school bureaucracy, or Jeremie requested the move to prevent any newcomer being shoved into his room and possibly learning about Lyoko, etc. As for out-of-story explanations, I... forgot to check when I was writing this episode, and when I found out I was wrong later, I was too lazy to fix it. It wound up being kind of important, or at least easier._

_Taidine_

Chapter Two: Breaking and Entering

The mood in Jeremie's room was subdued. Beneath the poster of Albert Einstein, Aelita and Odd sat on the bed, staring into the air. Kiwi sat between them, a lump of white, well-groomed fur that nevertheless managed to look disreputable; his stubby tail thumped on the rumpled sheets as Odd absently rubbed behind his tattered ears. On the computer, Jeremie tapped into a satellite program to download a map of the region, for whatever good that did. Yumi, who had shown up a few minutes after Ulrich was carried off, was stalking violently back and forth across the room, black outfit matching her dour expression perfectly. It had been nearly two _hours _now! What were they doing to him?

Silence. Silence. Then, slicing through it, came a chiming ring.

Aelita pulled a pink cell phone out of her pocket and held it to her ear. "Hello?" She paused. "We're in Jeremie's room." Another pause as the person on the other end spoke. "Alright," she said finally, and hung up. The others watched her intently. "That was Ulrich, He said he's fine, and he'll be here in a minute."

"Did he say what happened?" Yumi demanded, dropping down in an empty chair.

"No," said Aelita, "but he sounded a bit… worried."

All four lapsed into silence once more, and this time it was broken when the door burst open. Ulrich charged in, brown hair disarrayed, breathing heavily; he dropped on an unoccupied corner of the bed and gulped air.

"Hey, you okay?" Odd asked, moving over to make room for his friend. Kiwi was unceremoniously dumped off the bed; he landed with a thump and growled off to hide under Yumi's chair. Ulrich nodded and scooted over.

The others began to speak at once.

"Is XANA attacking?"

"What happened?"

"What did they want?"

Ulrich raised one hand limply to cut them off. "It's not XANA – at least, I don't think it is. But the police have records from some of his attacks. Remember the time he materialized krabes? Or when William made a mess of things with those zombies?"

The others nodded warily. He continued. "They have reports about it. No one remembers anything, but I guess one of them mentioned me. Tried to put them off, but it looks like Jeremie's ghosts are real."

"If the return-to-the-past didn't work once, I can't see it working again," said Jeremie, "but we can't let evidence build up."

"We could steal it back," suggested Odd flippantly.

Jeremie rested a hand on his mouse and peered out passed his computer screen. "You know, that might just work…"

Yumi stood up. "No way! We're talking about a police precinct here, not some science lab to get Jeremie spare parts. This is breaking the _law!_"

"And concealing a supercomputer that's trying to take over the world isn't?" Argued Ulrich wryly.

"If they find out about us, they'll shut down the computer and kill Aelita," Jeremie said firmly, "That's what we have to remember."

"Break into a police station? I'm in," Odd laughed. This, of course, from the kid who regularly tries to sneak his dog onto an airplane.

"Me too," announced Ulrich.

"Aelita?" Asked Jeremie, "You have the most to lose."

"Or gain," she replied. "Yes, I'll go."

Every eye, saving Kiwi, who had fallen asleep, turned to Yumi. She stared back defiantly. "I have a family to worry about," she announced, "You four can do what you want, but I'm not helping." Crossing her arms over her chest, she marched out of the room and slammed the door.

Jeremie sigh. "Alright. I downloaded plans of the precinct while we were waiting for Ulrich. It's probably best to make our move in the evening. I'll have to create a program to disable their security systems, but from what I've found they aren't exactly complicated. A-"

"Jeremie?" Odd broke in, "I'm glad you've got this all set up, but aren't there going to be _cops _in there?"

"I've got that figured out too," replied Jeremie happily, "Aelita, remember that antivirus we tried a few weeks ago?"

"Which one?" Responded the pink-haired girl wryly.

"The one that made you invisible."

- - - -

Half an hour later, the four emerged from Jeremie's room. "We'll get everything set at the Factory," Jeremie was saying in satisfied tones as they disappeared around the corner.

Three rooms down, a door left partially ajar crept fully open to reveal a girl with long black hair and enough eye makeup to paint a wall. "I thought they'd _never_ leave!" she announced shrilly, stepping out into the hallway and brushing off her pink shirt impatiently.

Following her out into the hallway were her two cronies and Kloe, jamming her pen back into place behind her ear. "Okay, here's the plan," the journalist announced, "I'll go in and snoop around. Sissi, you and your minions keep watch."

"Hey," protested Herve, glaring through his glasses, "Who are you calling a minion?"

Kloe pointed at Nicolas, who probably didn't know what the word meant. Sissi flicked a hand at her gang to shut them up. "I'm not waiting out here," she stated, "In fact, I bet you couldn't even get in without me." Kloe glared and twisted the doorknob; it rattled but refused to budge, firmly locked.

"I rest my case," said Sissi, reaching into a pocket on her skirt to produce a hairpin. "Excuse me."

Kloe watched incredulously as the principal's daughter rattled her pin about expertly in the lock for a moment, lips pursed and browns drawn, then twisted the knob and pushed the door open with a flourish. "Where," asked the reporter, "Did you learn how to do that?"

"Just a natural talent, I guess," beamed Sissi, then, more darkly, "you wouldn't believe how often Jim forgets to unlock the bathrooms in the morning. Now, let's see…" She stepped in and began poking under the mattress of Jeremie's bed. "Ulrich had a journal in his room once. I only got to read the first few pages, though."

_Ulrich had a journal, _Kloe thought, _but Jeremie isn't a pen and paper person. He's a computer person. Anything he has will be on his laptop…_There, resting innocently on Jeremie's desk, was his austere laptop, open and booted up. The screen saver wasn't even on yet. She took two steps towards it…

And the ugliest dog she had ever seen leapt out at her from under a chair. Skinny snout, barrel body, stumpy tail, patchy white fur and tattered ears – almost ugly enough to come around at cute again, going backwards. He tried to climb her jeans with short, blunt nails. "Down!" she squeaked, trying to back away.

Sissi abandoned her perusal of the mattress long enough to say: "Kiwi. Odd calls it a _dog. _You can kick him." Kiwi let go of Kloe's leg in favor of growling at Sissi and slunk back under his chair. Kloe, raising an eyebrow, made it the last three steps to the laptop without incident.

There were four windows open. The first was a blueprint labeled 'Precinct Office.' She closed that. The second was meaningless lines of computer code; she stared at it for a moment, then minimized it, just in case. A satellite photo of the area surrounding the school was shut. The last picture appeared to be a map of Kadic and the surrounding area. Kloe nearly closed that as well, but something caught her eye: a dotted line from the school to the river labeled simply 'passage.'

"Eli- Sissi?" She called, hitting _print _instead, "ever heard of a place called the Factory?"

- - - -

In the Factory, the intricate circular patterns on the doors of the elevator clicked and shifted, allowing the heavy metal doors to hiss open. There were four students within, but only Jeremie stepped out, heading to his seat with confidence gained through long practice. The holographic map cast two minute reflections in the lenses of his glasses as he tilted his head to fit on his earpiece and view the computer screens. All seemed well – he began to type. "I'm going to materialize your vehicles first, if I can. They're no more complicated then kankrelats, and XANA manages those easily enough."

The elevator doors hissed shut, and Jeremie fell silent, typing furiously. Presently, images of a one-wheeled motorcycle and a pink-and-purple skateboard sans wheels popped up on the screen. There was a click in his earpiece as the intercom activated. "All right everybody, stand back. We have vehicles!" said Jeremie, pressing the 'enter' key with a flourish.

There was a rumble of heavy machinery in the scanner room. Ulrich, Odd, and Aelita waited eagerly as the doors parted, revealing the 'bike and 'board, floating at ankle height.

"Oof," said Jeremie's voice over the PA, "not running that program again any time soon."

"Why not?" Asked Ulrich as Odd began poking at his board. It remained obstinately suspended in midair.

"It took a huge section of accessible power," said Jeremie, "It'll take a few hours to reboot, but I should have enough juice to run the stealth program. Everyone in scanners."

"What holds this up?" Asked Odd, standing on his overboard with one foot.

"Uh… what allows krabes to shoot lasers?" Replied Jeremie. "Don't question it too closely. I'm kind of hoping the laws of physics won't notice."

The three stepped into their scanners. "Okay," said Jeremie, hitting the 'enter' key again, "now loading stealth program." Three figures appeared on the screen and began filling with green. "Twenty-five percent loaded…fifty…congratulations, you are now the invisible students!"

The scanner doors opened. The golden tubes appeared completely empty. "Hey, where'd everybody go?" Joked Odd's voice from no discernable source.

"Jeremie, how long is this going to last?" Breathed Aelita, equally indiscernible.

"I set a two-hour time limit, but it might go a little over. Let me straighten out a couple more things and then you can head out."

- - - -

"We've been walking through this woods for hours and we haven't found a single secret passage," Sissi complained. "My feet hurt. We should go back. Don't you have some reporters to annoy or something?"

Kloe was about ready to agree – although they had not been walking for hours, her ears hurt, and her headache was coming back. "Just a few…" something glinted in the grass and dried leaves. "Hmm…" Kloe sauntered over. It looked like a manhole cover, or some kind of –

_Odd tried to hide the fact that Aelita was already half way down the shaft. "…nothing…" "…an evil supercomputer called XANA that's trying to take over the world?" Jeremie told her, eyes begging not to believe, to be scared off. Then the policewoman was bearing down on them, Odd beckoned her, she followed…_

Kloe blinked. "Found it."

"That old thing? That's an entrance to the _sewers,_" shrilled Sissi.

"It'll take us where we want to go."


	3. Chapter 3 : Petty Theft

**Episode Three : Necessary Crimes**

Soundtrack: Supertramp's "From Now On" (Just 'cause it fits…)

Chapter Three: Petty Theft

It was sunset by the time Jeremie was ready, half an hour into the invisible warriors' time limit. Long shadows stretched across the floor of the vast, empty first level. The doors of the elevator clicked and hissed open; Jeremie stepped out, trailed by the overboard and bike. "I'm going back to the school to monitor you – and keep Jim from noticing you're gone. Keep your cell phones turned on so I can keep tabs on you using the GPS system. You know the way. Get in, grab the papers, get out and come home!"

"You can't see me, but I'm nodding," Odd assured him. The overboard shook slightly as he climbed on; the overbike soon followed.

"Aelita?" Jeremie asked.

"Right here, Jeremie." An invisible hand rested on his. Jeremie could feel the blush creeping up his cheeks and quickly looked down.

"This is for you," he said, pulling out a black floppy disk. "It has a search and destroy virus targeting any file with our names in it. You have to load it onto the server at the precinct." He could feel her nod – she was standing almost uncomfortably close.

"I will, Jeremie." The floppy floated out of his hand and vanished as Aelita tucked it in her pocket; then the overbike shook again, revved up, and headed off. Odd's board followed. Jeremie stared after them until both had exited the Factory, then headed back towards the school.

A shadow behind one beam against the wall of the warehouse resolved itself into a pair of girls. "What were those things Jeremie had behind him?" Asked the black-haired one, "I _knew _they were doing something suspicious here!"

Kloe didn't bother to correct her. "That was just Jeremie. The others are probably still in here, but this is our best chance. Where are those minions of yours?"

Sissi glanced behind her where Herve and Nicolas were standing. Herve glared through his glasses, arms folded across his crisp white shirt. "We are _not _minions, Reporter Girl."

Kloe glared back. "Would you prefer cohorts? Cronies?"

"We're Sissi's _friends_," Herve said flatly.

Kloe dropped her gaze, shrugged, and quickly changed the subject. "We can figure it out later. We don't have much time." She headed for the elevator; the others followed.

The door of the weathered elevator slid open easily, but once inside there was something of a problem – a multitude of buttons and some manner of numbered keypad. Sissi eyed them with some frustration, and Kloe's, mouth tilted to the side as if trying to solve a puzzle, but Herve, still steaming, shouldered past the reporter to stand by the girl he called his friend. "Sissi, do you have any blush?"

"Mm?" She replied in puzzlement, "Why? Need a quick touch up?" He held out a hand, and she handed over a slim case produced from one pocket in her skirt. Brows knit in concentration, he brushed the cosmetic over the elevator buttons, then the numbers on the touchpad.

"No. It's simple," said Herve, who had seen this on TV once. "The blush shows fingerprints. This is the floor they went to-" he pressed a button, which lit "-and the keypad has a four-number access code, so once I know which numbers, it's just a matter of pressing them in different orders." He suited actions to words as he spoke, punching four buttons in different combinations. Suddenly, the elevator lurched downwards. "Eventually, something happens." He returned the blush to Sissi and stepped back, patting his hands in a satisfied way. Kloe was impressed in spite of herself; it was the sort of thing she would have come up with.

The elevator sank, then gradually slowed and stopped. Despite their massive construction and dilapidated appearance, the movement of the doors was smooth and balanced, the only noises as they slid apart the hiss and click of complicated machinery unlocking. _Why bother with the security, _Kloe wondered, _when someone with a little makeup and some patience can get it open? _Then she saw the room beyond, and her train of thought stopped as if it had run into a brick wall.

It was a computer lab, really, with an industrial look. Enormous green computer screens hung before a swiveling chair, displaying a random-patterns screensaver. A holographic projection hung near that, a three-D representation of a sphere with four flat spokes radiating outward. There was a massive cylinder of metal, containing hardware perhaps, numerous twisted cables, and exposed pipes lining the walls. Truth be told, it looked more like the bridge of a sci-fi space ship then something you would find under an old, disused factory. And it looked… familiar…

_Jeremie typed rapidly. "Virtualization!" A policewoman barging in from the elevator. A pen slipped free of her fingers, sailing across the room. Leaning over Jeremie's shoulder. Fear. "Send me."_

"Deja-vu," Kloe muttered, rubbing her head. Intellectually, she knew she had never been here before, but she seemed to have some impossible memories attached to it.

Nicolas was wandering the perimeter, looking lost, but then, he always looked like that. Herve was scrutinizing the hologram. Sissi had begun poking around the computer, shutting off the screensaver and revealing line upon line of dancing code.

Kloe trotted over, pulling free an electronic trinket that had been hung about her neck and hidden under her shirt, vaguely resembling a cigarette lighter in shape and size. Uncapping it revealed a metal extrusion made to interface with a computer; the rest was sleek plastic, and slightly larger then her thumb.

"What's _that_?" Sissi demanded.

Kloe knelt and began searching for a USB port. "It's a flash drive. I'm going to copy some of this code. As much as I can fit." Finding it, she plugged her device in.

"Because you're actually a super genius who can take it home and figure out what it does?" Sissi suggested caustically.

Kloe shook her head and began searching the menu for some sort of copy function. "No." That had to be it, SC – Ext. source. She hit enter: there was a hum, a pause, then a 'disk full' message. "I'm not actually very good with computers," she continued, pulling out her flash drive and recapping it. She hung it about her neck and tucked it into her shirt. "But… I know someone who is."

- - - -

On the sidewalk outside the precinct building, two riderless vehicles the likes of which Earth had never before seen pulled up alongside a row of shrubbery. There was a minute of scuffling as invisible hands shoved the strange contraptions behind the bushes, safely hidden from casual sight. Then a low, serious voice asked, "Aelita? Odd?"

"I'm here," whispered a breathy, feminine voice from the sidewalk.

"Me too," agreed a rather higher-pitched voice from the vicinity of the bushes. There was a rustling, and some leaves dropped to the ground.

"Let's do this, then. How do we get in?"

Aelita felt in her pocket where her cell-phone hummed gently next to the flat square of the floppy disk. "Jeremie said as soon as we got close he'd start jamming the security systems… but if he can't hack them, we'll have to wait until someone walks in."

"Jeremie – criminal mastermind," muttered Odd sarcastically, "How long do you bet we wait until someone shows up?"

The darkness grew silent. Short of bumping into them, no passer-by could possibly know the three small-time criminals were there.

Suddenly, a black-and-white car shot around the bend, lights flashing, and careened into an empty parking spot with a screech. The department logo was stamped on its side, and the people who jumped out were in uniform. "Come on!" shouted the driver, a gangly, dark fellow with glasses and the required hat, "we don't sign in, we don't get pay."

"I'm coming," muttered the girl in the passenger sheet, jamming a hat atop her long blonde hair. "But I take _no _blame if we're late. Got that? I'm not the one who had to stop for coffee."

The guy swiped his ID card and hauled the door open; the girl followed. Neither noticed the door hung open behind them a little longer then, by normal mechanics, it strictly should have.

As the police officers vanished into a brightly lit room full of the sounds of people signing in and out, Ulrich, Aelita, and Odd breathed identical sighs of relief, stopping by a metal door that opened onto an inconspicuous stairwell. "Well, we're in," muttered the air where Ulrich was standing.

"We have to go downstairs," Aelita whispered. The handle on the door to the stairwell twisted, and the whole metal door swung inward. "That's where the files are stored, on the blueprint."

At the bottom of a staircase that echoed with the tread of invisible feet, a second metal door swung open, revealing a long, empty room lined wit filing cabinets, "Ulrich, take the left side," Aelita directed, "Odd, the right."

"Where are you going?" Ulrich asked.

At the other end of the room, a door opened, revealing banks of whirring computer servers. "Straight ahead," said Aelita's voice as the door swung shut.

Fifteen minutes later, near a drawer on the right wall that hung open, there was a whoop of delight. A filing cabinet on the left slammed shut; a sheet of paper floated up from the drawer left ajar, and Odd's voice read out: "Prank call regarding 'zombies' or 'living dead' placed from Kadic Jr. High!" He riffled through the filing cabinet and pulled out another. "'Unidentified machines with inimical intent originating from Kadic...' What's inimical? Well, it's all here."

Ulrich and Aelita walked over, or at least, walked somewhere, their unseen footsteps echoing in the file room. "Then let's take it and go," Aelita urged, "before someone comes down here!"

Odd sorted through the sheets of paper in the cabinet, finally keeping about a dozen reports. "That's all," he told the others happily, "almost too easy!"

Ulrich winced, invisibly, but you could hear it in his voice. "Please don't jinx us."

"Jinx?" Questioned Aelita's voice. The file cabinet closed; a few seconds later, the door to the stairs opened. There was a suggestion of fingers about the knob…

Footsteps echoed in the stairwell. Ulrich, holding the middle position, stared at the place his hand should have been. Was that the faintest of outlines? "Aw, no. Thanks a lot, Odd."

"What?"

The door at the top of the stairs opened, and the three stopped just in time to avoid a pair of policemen standing in front of the exit.

"I don't get it," said one, sipping at a cheap paper cup of steaming coffee, "We're guarding the door? Like someone's going to walk off with it?"

"Some smart-aleck messin' with our security, I hear. We're just makin' sure they don't get away with whatever they're pullin'. Don't let anyone in or out without ID 'till we find out what that is," the second informed his partner, holding his own coffee in both hands.

The three Kadic students backed into the stairwell again, leaving the police to glower at their escape route. "Now what?" Ulrich whispered furiously, "We can't wait here until these guys leave, the invisibility thing is already wearing off!" He held up a hand by way of demonstration; the tips of his fingers were completely visible.

"What we need is a window," mused Odd.

"Jeremie…" Aelita half-begged, half-growled.

There was a sound of a door opening – the front door, by one of the police officers. On the other side of the door was a girl with black clothes blending into black hair and the darkness without, so her face and hands were the only things visible. The Kadic students peering down the hallway recognized her at once.

"Excuse me?" She said, pushing the door wider, "I'm sorry, my brother just dumped a virus into the main power grid that might have scrambled some security systems?" She felt someone brush past her. "Anyway, it's contained now. But I figured I should report it in case someone complained." Two further invisible presences moved out into the night. "Do you need a record backtracking the problem? I've got it here, but the virus is pretty lethal, so be careful when you open it." She offered a CD-rom.

The policemen fell into a brief, whispered conference. Without waiting for a response, she dropped the CD on the table between them and stalked out, letting the door swing shut behind her.

She hadn't gotten far when Ulrich's voice muttered in her ear, "Thought you didn't want to be an accessory to crime."

Yumi shrugged, looking ahead, but a minute smile tugged at the edges of her lips. "You guys know you'd be helpless without me. Let's go home."

- - - -

Monday afternoon found four kids once again wandering the grounds of their school. The air was clear and crisp. It was one of those autumn afternoons that tells you in no uncertain terms winter is rapidly approaching – you could feel a bite of cold in the wind, smell the peculiar metallic tang of snow mingled with the crisp aroma of dried leaves. It was a time of transition.

But some things never change.

"I thought we'd never get through Sunday!" Odd exclaimed, now visible once more from the tip of his gravity-defying blonde and purple hair to the rounded toes of his sneakers. "I mean, I was beginning to _want _school to start again!"

Aelita laughed, shaking her pink-topped head. "I think we'd better make sure Jeremie hasn't activated a Tower – he seems to be possessing Odd!"

"Nah," said Ulrich, "I just saw him in Italian. He couldn't get to the Factory that fast even if he kept our vehicles."

"How is it he can program a CD with enough information about a lethal virus to fool the police, but he can't remember how to say, 'Buon giorno, mi chiamo Jeremie?'" Odd wondered aloud.

"Speaking of programming," Yumi flipped dark hair out of her face. "Aelita and I need to head over to the computer lab."

"Aelita's taking a computer course?" Odd grinned, "I know there's a joke in there somewhere."

Aelita offered another small laugh. "Well, knowing about computers from the inside is an advantage, but I don't know much about using basic programs. Or the internet!"

Yumi nodded. In the distance, something rang. "There goes the bell. Let's go, Aelita." The two girls broke off from the group and made for the computer lab, newest building on the Kadic campus.

Inside the long, low building, neat banks of monitors stood back to back along rows of desks. Banks of servers hummed, warming the air, and Internet hubs blinked; mice clicked and keyboards chattered. Yumi and Aelita took the last pair of seats, noisy metal folding chairs near the front that clanged and tangled with the desk legs as their occupants settled in and the class began.

At a desk in the back, nearly flush with the far wall, a blonde haired girl with a slim black choker and a pen behind one ear tried to hide behind her monitor as she illicitly checked her e-mail.

TO: CanadianBelleIT. investigativejournalist1FR. Hiya!

Elyse! Hey, wzup? How's Italy treating you?

Kadic rox my sox, but the cliques are XP. I've already gotten involved in two rival groups. Didn't handle it vry well. Also, the newspaper is understaffed. And the food is blech. But the classes are Awshum. Missing you; the only people (person) here who looks like he can hold an intelligent conversation won't talk to me.

Sending you a package xpress. Has a flash drive w/ some weird code you might like. Not sr what it is, open w/ care.

Kloe Makhavi

TO: investigativejournalist1FR. CanadianBelleIT. RE: Hiya!

Kloe! As they say in Italy, Buon Giorno, la mia cugina! The language is frankly simple compared to binary/hex, and Italy is fab. From your description of Kadic… well, better you then me.

Checked out the code. Wow! Haven't seen anything this good since… well, last week, when I was checking out the software from my great-uncle. Still, it's pretty impressive. Looked like a deuce to decrypt, but I hit it with some of the key programs I've been using and it fell apart in my lap. Laptop. Made me late for school this morning. Beautiful, beautiful code. No idea what it does, though. Thought it could be a video game, but I bet the whole thing would take more processing power to run then my /whole neighborhood/ has. You only sent a TINY PIECE. Like, that is to the whole thing as one tree is to a square mile of forest. Really. It's fiendishly detailed. Also, looks like it has an embedded printer driver, which makes /no/ sense.

Must go back to class now. Send me more! I cleaned your flash drive and am sending it to you & another one with more memory. Should reach you by tomorrow, will tell you more later

Arrivaderci,

Elyse Hopper

– Fin –

_I adore cliffhangers._

_Oh, you're wondering why this is late? Various reasons. However, to make up for it, I give you... two chapters today! Yep, that's right, go find the next episode's first chapter as soon as you finish this one..._

Taidine


End file.
